For years the idea of environmentalism and the move towards sustainability have caused a commotion in the packaging industry. In order to keep up, businesses have to please a more educated and savvy consumer.

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Sustainable packaging continues to generate headlines all over the world: the latest food waste prevention, biobased packaging materials, and the recent adoption of eco-friendly labels to encourage consumers to recycle packaging.

Printing leaders aren’t just at the top of their industry. In many ways, they also need to be experts of the domains in which they do business. Printers take different approaches to cater to specific clients, like in the food industry, for example.

There are different kinds of printing proofs that serve different functions. For anyone in the pharmaceutical, food & beverage, and cosmetic industries, it’s important to understand how and when the different types of printer’s proofs are used.

In the packaging and printing industry, the term ‘dieline’ is used to refer to a template needed to ensure the correct layout of a final physical package. This template serves as a diagram that marks all the folds and cut lines of a package in a flattened form.

For the uninitiated, the “Q” stays the same with regard to each of the above acronyms. They stand for Installation, Operational, and Performance Qualification and each impacts the product development process and quality control in its own way.

In a world where consumers have become more discerning of the products they buy, we can’t emphasize enough the importance of labels in marketing. Shopping is a process that every business owner needs to understand and the discovery of a product or service starts with an effective marketing strategy.

The term product quality can be interpreted in different ways depending on the country or region you live in, but perhaps the most crucial variable that determines what quality represents is the unique set of quality objectives integrated by a company.

The FDA is responsible for protecting and ensuring public health in relation to drug and food products. In other words, they monitor the labeling and advertising of products that are sold in the United States.

Have you ever felt that your product wasn’t getting enough attention? That clients are choosing a similar product over yours? Often this choice comes down to the smallest of details. Some of these details are as simple as the shade of blue you are using.

With the mainstream accessibility of broadband Internet and 4G these days, web-based applications and mobile apps make it convenient for users to access their favorite applications, wherever and whenever they want.

Every company needs change, but in the midst of implementing it, only a few of them think about ISO 9000. It is mostly perceived as a purely technical standard that only specific industries have to deal with.

Pharmaceutical companies waited until the last possible moment to move to the cloud. Now sufficiently satisfied that their security concerns have been addressed, they’re finally poised to reap the benefits.

At GlobalVision, we understand the importance of aiming for perfection. With so much competition across endless industries, one slip up could mean the difference between the success or failure of a business’s quarter for the business.

Our world is growing at a rapid pace and so is the consumer market. The space between the market and the consumer’s home has drastically shrunk in the recent times, with online marketplaces as the next big thing.

The pharmaceutical marketplace has changed dramatically over the last few years as pharmaceutical companies are moving from centralized, internal production to single-source providers or Contract Manufacturing Organizations (CMO).

Why use smartphones and tablets to scan? Because they are relatively inexpensive, scan barcodes very quickly and are well understood by app users. Perhaps most important, a lot of companies have already deployed iOS and Android OS devices to their employees.

Data integrity has become a serious issue over the past few years and therefore is a core focus of many enterprises. The FDA published a Data Integrity Guidance Document outlining compliance with CGMP that addresses the role of data integrity for industry.

Every product in every store all over the world has a barcode on it. As consumers, we cannot read barcodes, and really don’t care much about them. We identify products by their name, by their color, by the brand name and logos.

For print professionals, the complexities of labeling and packaging can present numerous challenges. Ask any member of a prepress department and they will tell you that artwork must be right the first time and every time.

Barcodes have changed very little over the last 60 years. For pharmaceutical companies, the barcode has taken on a vital role throughout the product’s lifecycle from original packaging to in hospital unit dose identification.

The pharmaceutical and defense sectors may be at opposite extremes. There is still something to be said in the former for the built-in fail-safes and redundancies that go hand in hand with any product that even hopes to meet military standards.

Creating content for public consumption can be a stressful job. Think about the person that has to write the copy for the back of a Cheerios box. Millions of people will read the back of that cereal box every morning and any typos would be terrible for the brand and the consumers’ confidence in the product.

Packaging and labelling are driven by a number of factors. First, you have the ergonomics of the package, ensuring that the object is packaged properly ensuring protection, convenience, and the proper message is communicated.

Packaging serves as the face that products show to the world. That’s why colorful and well-thought-out designs are meant to grab customers’ attention. Packaging is also supposed to convey a message that is associated with each brand.

No matter what industry you are in there are always new regulations which impact the way you create artwork. Staying in compliance with regulatory labeling obligations is a complex undertaking that if done wrong may result in undesired errors or reworking.

What’s at stake with a product misspelling? For any other type of business, it would mean a complete recall – costly, but maybe otherwise harmless– but, when it comes to the pharma industry, a whole other set of issues could present themselves.

With autocorrect and spell-check as commonplace as it is today, typos should be nearing extinction. However, even with today’s helpful technology and auto-correct-capable word-processing software, errors still slip through the cracks.

When flipping through a brochure or any sort of packaging, you probably think that to get a design printed all you have to do is press the print button. The truth is there are plenty of steps in between before that design becomes ink on paper.

The statistics on opioid abuse in the United States is grim. In 2014, Opioids were responsible for 28,648 deaths according to the CDC. In fact, more people died of drug abuse that year than did of motor vehicle accidents.

The use of barcodes dates back to the early 1960’s, initially deployed within the automotive and railroad industry. In the early 1970’s they were implemented within the retail industry, mainly in grocery stores.

Pharmaceutical packaging companies are experiencing big market growth. Reaching a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 6.5% per year worldwide, the market is witnessing quick development in the BRIC countries and throughout Asia.

Business owners and manufacturers know that flawed packages carry a negative message for their brands. An imperfect package is an imperfect business, especially living in a world with customers that have lofty expectations.